Embracing Essence: Recognizing Uniqueness

In this episode pioneering regenerative thinker Carol Sanford rejoins me to share a living systems framework she calls The Seven First Principles of Regeneration.

Resources to Deepen Learning

• My first chat with Carol (also see these follow up words from Carol)
• My second chat with Carol where she shares her four levels of paradigm
• Carol’s website
• The Deep Pacific Change Agent Community (That Dan is part of)
• A series of articles in which Carol applies the Seven First Principles to education
• Carol going through the principles in a different way on her Business Second Opinion Podcast
• Carol’s book The Regenerative Life in which she goes through the seven first principles
• Wholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm

A few transcribed lines from the episode

Thanks to MPS patron Jon Buttery for pulling some comments that stood out for him from the chat (with approx times):

13:36 – “I don’t want you to be disappointed that after a year you haven’t got them [the seven first principles], that’s a good sign”

18:57 – “You can’t go do – in the sense that you’ll change something – you have to go think a different way and you have to start in a different place”

22:43 – “The word ‘systems thinking’ is thrown around for a lot of things that are machine based” 

23:23 – “There are no feedback loops …. we impose those kinds of ideas”

24:05 – “A fragmented view …  we assume … if we get good enough … somehow we’ll see how they all relate” 

26:53 – “What is the work this place does in this planet?  … what is its story?”

30:23 – “Watch yourself making lists”

32:26 – “Fragmentation is the basis of every problem on the earth”

38:40 – “It took me literally a couple of decades to learn to see essence. … it’s a different way of seeing the world”